Find great deals on eBay for Star Wars Program in Movie Memorabilia Programs. This is an ORIGINAL screening program for Star Wars, as distributed at 20th Century Fox studio screenings in.

Why the Strategic Defense Initiative Didn't Gain Political Support - How the Star Wars Program Didn't Work. President Reagan suspected that the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) would infuriate the Soviet Union. Despite Reagan's repeated assurances that the defense system would only be used to prevent the Soviet Union from attacking rather than giving the U. S. Within a year, the Soviets were directing 7. SDI, despite finding the program not feasible to begin with .

For instance, the Anti- Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1. United States and the Soviet Union to two (and later one) ground- based missile defense systems. The 1. 96. 7 Outer Space Treaty, signed by several countries including the U. S. European allies were concerned about how the program would affect the precarious balance of power between them and the Soviet Union. These fears from home and abroad introduced some serious tension into negotiations among all parties involved. Still, despite serious pressure to put SDI on the bargaining table in an effort to get the Soviet Union to reduce its nuclear armament, Reagan refused to compromise the program. Subsequent presidents, however, were quick to modify and cut the program.

Bush initiated a review of SDI shortly after the start of his term, ultimately deciding to refocus the program and drastically cut back its scope. Granted, by this time the Soviet Union had collapsed, diminishing the threat of large- scale nuclear war. Rapidly rising costs and relatively few tangible results had also made the program more unpopular than ever. President Bill Clinton further refined the scope of the project, and before long, the United States' missile defense programs looked very little like what Reagan envisioned when he announced the program. Of course, things might have gone very differently for SDI had the technological aspects of the program not been so daunting.

Read on to see exactly how SDI hoped to shoot down nuclear missiles, and how those hopes never quite turned into reality.